


Your Dreams Still Escape

by umadoshi (Ysabet)



Category: Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: Adopted Sibling Incest, Adopted Sibling Relationship, Canon Disabled Character, Codependency, Community: hc_bingo, F/M, Headaches & Migraines, POV First Person, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 17:33:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysabet/pseuds/umadoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>We've got a system that works for us. A lot of it boils down to "George takes care of the details and I take care of her". Sometimes I'm a little too good at leaving her job up to her; sometimes she's kind of crap at letting me do mine.</i>
</p><p>Set early in <i>Feed</i>, as things are about to get hectic in preparation for following Senator Ryman's campaign.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Dreams Still Escape

**Author's Note:**

> Filling the wild card square on my hc_bingo card (on Dreamwidth) with the headaches/migraine prompt.
> 
> Title from Tom McRae's "Out of This".

People tend to have this idea that George doesn't feel things very intensely. Sometimes they even say so aloud, just to be assholes--like the dozen or so classmates we had over the years who spewed some crap like that where I could hear them. I don't really get why they never seemed to clue in that messing with my sister--in _any_ way--is a guaranteed ticket to a split lip or worse, but the whole time we were in school they just kept on needing periodic reminders. Yeah, she's smarter than you. Suck it up. You have something to say about her black eyes? I'll be happy to give you a pair of your own, but they'll be the more traditional kind--stellar night vision not included.

People make no fucking sense. It's no wonder I like spending my time with zombies. Nice, predictable zombies. You know what they'll do if you poke them with something, and sure, what they'll do is try to eat you, but sometimes predictable counts for a lot in my books.

The thing no one seems to get about George is, she feels plenty. She just doesn't see any point in not keeping what she feels under wraps and under control. That means she compartmentalizes well enough that she doesn't exactly _do_ conflicting emotions. If she's feeling more than one thing, each emotion gets its own box instead of them all bleeding into each other and making a mess everywhere. It's a neat trick.

George doesn't need anyone but me to understand her, just like I don't need anyone but her to understand me. That doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice if people _tried_ to figure her out once in a while.

\--From _Hail to the King_ , the blog of Shaun Mason, November 29, 2038. Unpublished.

**********

Every time our school gets a new teacher, or worse, new administration, the other kids size them up in terms of whether they're likely to be easy or hard-nosed about grades, whether they seem like they'll play favorites, and of course, what kind of gun they're mostly likely to have.

Shaun places his bets along with everyone else, but I'm usually too busy trying to decide how the new authority figure in our lives will react the first time they have to write Shaun up for something and whether they'll try to stop me from going with him to the office or being conferenced in online with him. (I don't go to detention with him. He can do that on his own, unless we get a teacher who thinks my insistence on going to the relevant "meeting" means I qualify for punishment too.)

Every one of them is a fresh unknown, so any of them could be the one who doesn't look to see _why_ my brother gets in trouble, the one who doesn't know or care who our parents are, the one who finally expels Shaun and looks shocked when I go too. The Masons won't fight back. Instead, they'll write carefully-balanced posts about the challenges of modern education or on standing up for your convictions and your loved ones, and then they'll make sure we get into journalism school anyway.

Naturally, those inevitable posts will never include the word "bullying". I don't know if they never publicly comment on that occasional aspect of our school lives--people say nasty things about me, Shaun beats them half to death; rinse and repeat a few months later--to spare me somehow or because they don't want that to be part of the public perception of their daughter. Either works for me. I'm not a victim, and not only because Shaun hits the people who want to make me one; he's doing that as much for himself as for me. He's got my back whether he's physically retaliating or not, and that's all I need.

But meanwhile, I wait for the next time someone tries to keep me out of the room while Shaun gets chewed out, when I'll be forced to reiterate a question for which no one ever has a real answer: How, in any _possible_ world, can you claim his behavior has nothing to do with me?

\--From _Just the Wind_ , the blog of Georgia Mason, March 25, 2034. Unpublished.

**********

 

By the time we got home from our "celebratory" dinner with our folks and Buffy the night we found out we'd scored the job with Senator Ryman's presidential campaign, it had gotten pretty late and a lot of my excitement was on the back burner because a) surprise, surprise, our parents were frustrating, and b) George was in a ton of pain. Being hit in the face with a bunch of high-intensity flashes and then spending a couple of hours with the stress of having to smile at dinner because cameras were always pointed at our table and it was better to play along than get lectured later does that to her. Reliably. And our parents keep setting it up to happen--they'll let her out of things once she's _got_ a migraine, but they suck at preventing them. So my excitement was still there, but mostly I was too pissed off to pay it much attention.

But George? As soon as we escaped up to her room, she jumped straight to being simultaneously thrilled out of her mind and seriously fucking aggravated at our parents, and also wanting to die a little from how much her head hurt. She was actually excited enough that she couldn't make herself sit at her computer, which says a lot right there, so she was kind of pacing and wincing and thinking out loud at me. The wincing was bad--it meant her migraine was severe enough that _any_ light was bothering her. I turned her UV lamps off entirely, leaving only the glow from her main monitor, which defaults to being so dim I had to really squint to see her.

"Hey, George," I said, when she paused for breath, or possibly to work through the details of a plan she wanted to run by me--probably about something that could wait, like upgrading some equipment to the specs Buffy'd been begging for for months. "Can I get you anything? Pain meds? Backup recorder in case the five you've got running glitch? Maybe some horse tranquillizers?"

She stopped in the middle of the room. "I notice two of your three suggestions are drugs."

"I can come up with a third drug option if you want a tidier list," I said. "And seriously, I'm as excited as you are--" Despite the dark room and her sunglasses, I could _feel_ the look she gave me. "I'm almost as excited as you are," I amended. "But we're gonna hit the ground running in the morning and not stop for God knows how long, and you won't be starting at the top of your game if you don't lose the migraine and get some sleep."

Her only response was a dismissive noise. Right. Time to go on the offensive. "You've still got your shades on 'cause you haven't even noticed it's _dark_ in here."

"Shaun--"

" _Georgia_ ," I said, mimicking her annoyance. "We've been home for half an hour and you're still wearing your skirt." It was a bit of a low blow, but it got the point across.

She still made a game effort at missing said point. "The skirt was _your_ idea."

"You know our ratings go up when you show off your legs once in a while."

"Oh, so now it was just for the cameras?"

I didn't bother replying. She knew as well as I did how that conversation would go: no, the skirt wasn't entirely for the cameras, because she has great legs under the practical-but-boring slacks she usually wears, but on the other hand I already get to see them a lot. Actually having the conversation would waste another five minutes that would be better spent with her in bed.

We've got a system that works for us. A lot of it boils down to "George takes care of the details and I take care of her". Sometimes I'm a little too good at leaving her job up to her; sometimes she's kind of crap at letting me do mine.

" _Fine_ ," she said.

"Okay." Every time I walk into her room I memorize where her things are so I can navigate it even in complete darkness, or when it's dim enough that it'd be easy to trip on something. She's as good as I am at always keeping her weapons in the exact same spots, but her clothes and other equipment tend to wind up wherever she drops them. "Which meds do you want?"

She sighed noisily, giving ground and begrudging every inch of it. "Medium."

Going into our shared bathroom from her side automatically made it illuminate via UV instead of white light, which meant my eyes had nothing to adjust to and also that I still couldn't really see, since she doesn't keep _those_ lights configured for anyone's eyes but her own. All of George's various meds are stored in very differently-shaped containers, no matter what packaging they come in, for exactly that reason. Having "normal" eyes doesn't mean I shouldn't do my share of compensating for the quirks of her vision, so I spend a lot of my time at home not being able to see all that well. It's still a hell of a lot less time than she spends at a disadvantage, and way less frustrating than not being in the same room with her. The fact that it's good training is just a perk.

George was standing exactly where I'd left her, and when I counted pills out into her hand, she dry-swallowed them without further protest. "The job'll still be there tomorrow," I told her.

"Listen to you, being all practical." But she leaned into me, resting the weight of her head on my sternum. "My door's locked. Is yours?"

Those five words, combined with her headache, told me exactly what she wanted. "Yeah, it is." I started unbuttoning her shirt without another word, both of us pretending it was because my hands were steadier than hers--which they were--and not because I needed to be _doing_ something. Plenty of what I do for her is stuff she's perfectly capable of, and as long as we both know I know that, she can let herself enjoy it. God knows she keeps enough balls in the air that she needs every bit of relaxation she's willing to take, plus about a thousand times more.

When she was down to her underwear, she fished a t-shirt--one of mine, probably, but I couldn't make it out clearly enough to be sure--from the back of a chair and pulled it on. The skirt, predictably, got abandoned on the floor. "You can kill the rest of the light," I said.

She nodded and tapped her monitor off, plunging the room into what might as well have been utter darkness as far as my eyes were concerned. I could register the faint glow of electronics that never went out, but it illuminated nothing for me. I listened to the click of her sunglasses when she put them on the bedside table, and followed her to her bed by memory and feel.

The sound of relief she made as she lay down could've been due to anything; viable candidates included the dark, the painkillers starting to make a dent in her migraine, and having me lying right beside her instead of in the next room. "We got the job," she whispered.

"We sure did."

"You're still dressed."

"If I'd left you alone long enough to ditch my clothes, you would've been at the computer by the time I got back and it would've been impossible to make you lie down."

"Are you staying?" she asked.

We try not to spend many full nights together, to make it a treat or a comfort when I sleep in her room. We _could_ ; our parents can't exactly do bed checks with our doors locked. But most nights I'm in my bed and she's in hers, and we only let ourselves leave the connecting door open maybe half the time. Forcing ourselves to stay a bit apart is good--it's a reminder of what we'll be able to have when we finally make our escape. And now, suddenly, escape was so close I could taste it. That thought was enough to bring my excitement over the job back to the forefront.

I answered her question by tucking my arms around her and pressing a kiss to her cheek. The way she snuggled into me spoke volumes about how much pain she was in. Most of her migraines make her pricklier than usual, AKA the polar opposite of wanting to be held because she hurts. There are occasional days when I'm lucky if I get anything out of her but a snarl, when I stay close if she'll let me but don't touch her without an explicit invitation. For one thing, it's no fun to have her lash out at me, and for another, when she's having a day like that the last thing she needs is to feel guilty for taking it out on me.

"I wish I could've decked them," I said, keeping my voice quiet without trying to hide my anger. "I can't believe how many of those assholes used those flashes on you. Everyone on the planet who knows your name knows about your eyes."

"I knew there was a reason I love you." She managed a laugh, turning her head so I could massage her temple. "Because you want to punch people for me."

"I thought it was because I was your ticket out of this hellhole." I grinned, knowing she could see my expression just fine. "Did you do the math on what the campaign's gonna do for our financials? We are so out of here when it's over." I couldn't hug her the way the thought made me want to--not without taking my fingers away from her face, and I could feel her relaxing while I worked--so I settled for kissing the top of her head. "We are _out_ , George. If we don't want to, we'll never need to spend another night here after that."

"We've got to take care of getting our site hosting set up tomorrow," she said vaguely. Even her medium-grade painkillers make her speech fuzzy once they kick in. She'd stop being entirely coherent before too long, if she didn't fall asleep first. The good news was it wouldn't carry over into the next day, unlike the truly hard-hitting drugs she hates taking because of what they do to her brain.

"Another twenty bucks says Buffy's already got the hosting covered by the time we wake up."

"You're..." George trailed off, then rallied. "You're trying to bankrupt me."

"If I were trying to bankrupt you, I wouldn't have let you wear a skirt tonight in lieu of cash."

"Right. You 'let' me," she grumbled back.

"I just offered. You could've paid up instead." I idly rubbed my thumb along her eyebrow and down under her eye, close enough to brush against her lashes. I don't quite know if she just doesn't mind or actively likes how much I touch her naked face when I can; I'm not sure she knows either.

Other things, I am sure about. I felt her smile against my lips when I kissed her, followed by her fingers clenching into my shirt. We were both a little clumsy, me because of the dark and her because of the meds, but it was nothing we weren't used to. I pressed her against the mattress, careful not to jostle her head, and kept kissing her until the way she was responding went from "kind of shaky" to "completely out of it".

"Okay," I said, resolutely ignoring her groggy protest when I stopped. "Time for all the drugged-up Newsies in the bed to sack out."

"Shut up," she murmured, in a tone that meant she was making a face at me. "Some of us are _trying_ to sleep."

"You just can't let me get the last word, huh?" But it was mine whether she'd deliberately given it to me or not; her breathing was slowing into full sleep. She didn't move away when I cuddled against her, so I made myself comfortable without letting go. I'd already positioned myself right against the wall, leaving her most of the bed to migrate to in her sleep when her subconscious inevitably decided she'd had her fill of coziness.

I'd give a hell of a lot to have my sister not in chronic pain, including never, ever getting to fall asleep with her in my arms. It makes me a little sick when it happens because she's hurting, because part of me still can't help enjoying it. George's only comment on it has ever been that she enjoys it too, or she wouldn't do it, but I can't shake the wrongness of it. Nights like those, what I want most is for her to get fed up and push me away because she's feeling better.

"Night," I said, very quietly.

Sound asleep, George still responded to my voice, pressing her face harder against my shoulder and making a small sound that somehow managed to convey exasperation from the depths of unconsciousness. _Don't be an idiot, Shaun._

"Right." I kissed her hair, all I could reach of her head, and hugged her closer. "Love you too."


End file.
